WildWords -- It blows away Scrabble! (Click Size Button)

[paranoid711]

LOL If you often play words like "cat" and "rain" in Scrabble, you're doing it wrong.

[ZayaPam]

I adore this game! I'm a pretty serious Scrabbler--not tournament level, but I love the game and take it a mite too seriously. This is a different game entirely. Double and triple words matter, but the real challenge and joy to this game is using all of your tiles. A good player can do this quite often with creative asterisk usage and judicious use of the "tile trade-in" rule. Plus, none of my friends will play Scrabble with me anymore, but they'll try this game. Sometimes they even win!

[PRoizen]

I recently played my first game where I used all seven tiles every play. Mind you, there might have been other games where that was possible but sometimes a short play is better in terms of points and strategy.

The scores for the plays ranged from around 36 (getting two turn-to-wilds but also hitting the lose-20 square) which is a fairly crummy score to 130+ hitting both the triple and double word squares with a decent letter on the triple letter.

My favorite played word was CINEMATOGRAPHY.

[MrMattwaffle]

@ZayaPam I hate Scrabble - The Letters I have never can Spell Anything.

[ashliebelle]

That looks like fun!! My friends and I play scrabble often, sometimes once a day during our 2 hour break between studio classes; it'd be great to have a new game to play that focuses on big words and not on who knows all the dumb 2 and 3 letter words that nobody uses... makes me feel like an ass for pulling them out with people who don't play often. And for once, a lone C or a V won't deaden an entire area of the board!

[gretelkitty]

I return the challenge to you then; learn to play WildWords properly! When you play WW "properly" by Scrabble's definition, of course you won't like it! Why are Scrabble-enthusiasts so resistant to any other crossword game anyway? It's kind of bizarre... Loyalty to an old friend is great and all, but can't you make new friends, too!????

[Nebagram]

Love to see a Clabbers version of this, you'd be playing all your tiles each turn. :-) What's the scoring system like?

[PRoizen]

Word was "discombobulating."

Scoring system is similar to Scrabble (bonus squares) with a 40 point bonus for using all seven tiles (instead of 50).

However, that bonus will be obtained by good players perhaps six times or so during a game (two person game).

[Ezek2517]

Nice idea, I do like Scrabble though. What was that word he used? discogragulbig, i'm lost. I prefer words like azo, qat and Xu.

[Lava1964]

The trouble is I'm a serious tournament Scrabble player, so playing other similar word games might lead to bad habits and hurt my Scrabble game.

[gretelkitty]

Ah! Fair enough, then! But I suspect that if you're clever enough to be a contender in Scrabble, you won't do yourself any harm by dabbling elsewhere! To continue with my "brain exercise" simile: it's like a crew athlete whose upper body is in great shape from rowing who then decides to add jogging to his/her regimen. It will sculpt muscular legs to balance out the fabulous upper torso! ;-) Good luck in your competition, Lava1964 - I understand that Scrabble tournaments can be pretty intense!

[PRoizen]

Playing WW might or might not improve a Scrabble player's performance. Some top Scrabble people have the game. They tend to get it as a change of pace or to play with friends to even the odds of winning.

You do learn to think differently in WW. In Scrabble you look at a blank as A or B or C, etc. In WW (if you play it well) you look at the other letters for series that go together and never think of the asterisk as anything. This definitely leads to some new brain connections.

[Lava1964]

Sorry, Scrabble is better. If you are only getting four-letter words after 50 years of Scrabble, you haven't learned rack management.

[gretelkitty]

Well, this is a crossword game and therefore similar to Scrabble, but if you play it LIKE Scrabble, you really won't "get" it as a seperate, unique game! The thing that makes it different (and fun in a different way) is that you can think up multisyllabic words and use them -- words that wouldn't be possible in Scrabble, rack management or no. This exercises a different part of your brain! It's really fun, so try it again just putting aside the whole Scrabble comparison! (I like them both.)